Man caught with 15,644 child porn files in raid

AN ANDERGROVE man was caught with more than 15,600 child pornography files on his devices during a police raid at his home.

Clay Alexander Perkins' father leaned against a wall inside Mackay Courthouse and sobbed heavily after his son avoided a jail term on Thursday for possessing child exploitation material.

Perkins, a 21-year-old retail worker, faced the District Court in Mackay, pleading guilty to possessing the material on his mobile phone, laptop and desktop computer on September 27 last year.

He also pleaded guilty to breaching bail by failing to report in on November 24, 2017.

Crown prosecutor Patrick Nevard described the amount of material found as "voluminous", and added the files involved children "ranging in age from very young" through to "pre-pubescent".

"(Perkins) is still a very young man and prior to today he had no previous convictions. But on the day in question ... police executed a search warrant at his house and located child exploitation material ... ," he said.

"There was a total of 15,644 unique files located."

Mr Nevard said it was significant that 678 of the files were categorised (on the Oliver scale) as of a "more serious" nature, in "categories 2 to 6.

The Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council describes those categories as relating to: sexual activity between children or masturbation by a child; non-penetrative sexual activity between adults and children; penetrative sexual activity between children and adults; sadism and anime, cartoons and drawings.

In defence, barrister Bronwyn Hartigan told Judge Julie Dick that Perkins was "prone to smiling when he's scared or nervous", asking her to disregard anything untoward.

Ms Hartigan said most of files found were Category 1, relating to erotic posing.

She told the court Perkins had been "transitioning to a woman" and undergoing hormone therapy since age 17, and that he was a "vulnerable person", with traits of someone on the autism spectrum.

Ms Hartigan said Perkins was committed to rehabilitating and had been regularly undergoing counselling.

Judge Julie Dick criticised Perkins for his actions and said such offending fuelled the market for child pornography.

Considering a lack of prior record and other factors, Judge Dick sentenced Perkins to 18 month jail, suspended immediately for two years.